Tim Farrar

Decided it was about time to get back to blogging, as its getting harder and harder to find threads on X, and I thought it would be useful to highlight some of my recent research publications tmfassociates.com/blog/2025/07/0…

A heatmap of the changes in frequency from day to day vs the average for VIASAT-3 F2. Using the this we should have a pretty sensitive means of detecting any change in line of sight velocity or other effect such as attitude changes that effect thermal and power conditions.

Some have asked how sensitive my system is to change. The better question is: what can cause changes in received frequency? Line-of-sight velocity Thermal conditions Power load These plots of VIASAT-3 F2 compares ~10 days of signal to look for shifts. Nothing major stands out.

@SpectrumSleuth @malleven33 That was the consensus view yes, but which do you think would be better from Apple's point of view?

@malleven33 @SpaceX @Globalstar @TMFAssociates I’m hearing is much more likely to be Amazon

Is @SpaceX buying @Globalstar ? The (possibly) $10 billion question. @TMFAssociates 👇 🖇️tinyurl.com/2e68ne55 🖇️

Breaking: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Hazard area's have appeared for the launch of New Glenn's NG-3 launch carrying AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 (Block 2 FM2) satellite! They indicate that launch is scheduled for NET April 12th, with a daily launch window opening at 10:45 UTC until roughly 13:43 UTC.

Unlike its AI peers, SpaceX faces scrutiny over whether its growth can justify trillion-dollar ambitions. thein.fo/4tlontd

VIASAT-3 F2 update. Not much to report. The spacecraft has not demonstrated significant change in behaviour since arrival in GEO. Minor changes in commanding behaviour at times but no stepped disturbances were attitude change of the space vehicle is revealed.

🇵🇱The Polish National Institute of Telecommunications (Instytut Łączności – Państwowy Instytut Badawczy) has awarded a €2.97bn contract to @Starlink for the provision of satellite connectivity services to Ukraine. Starlink Ireland was the single bidder. ted.europa.eu/en/notice/-/de…

I think it is high time the analysts at @CSIS update their horribly misleading information on launch costs. It is not only very out of date, but also very wrong on many counts. Seeing the press (and others) referring to it is cringy as hell.

And WTF is this nonsense? AST may once have planned to use Starship in its fantasy SPAC projections, but no longer

Sigh...whether or not Starship works, third parties won't have access to it at "cost"

As I was saying...

Is SpaceX buying GlobalStar? fierce-network.com/wireless/space…

@trengriffin @wingod Jim always lived in Colorado and his resume indicates he was a consultant. His claim to be "Chief Architect" should be taken with a pinch of salt, he was one of 11 inventors listed on the patent

@wingod @TMFAssociates Russ Daggatt (the actual Teledesic CEO) doesn't remember Jim as being an actual employee. Jim provided advice on launch issues. He had *zero* checkbook authority.

A bit of clarification here. As far back as Werner Von Braun, we knew what to do. The next iteration of the Saturn 5 had winged flyback for the S1 stage, which would have had about the same mass penalty as vertical landing. In the 1990's Kistlers Two Stage to Orbit (TSTO design) would have worked. The problem was that George Mueller (of the Saturn V), trusted far too much in the legacy contractors and they screwed them. The leftist in government said that we were spending too much money in space and thus cut NASA's budget in half, while at the same time spending 10X NASA's budget on failed social programs. The Atlas 1 had the Stainless steel tanks and with the sustainer stage was almost a single stage to orbit. That was Bossier's design. As far as Starlink goes, Teledesic would have done than in the 1990's and was well on the way to doing so. What killed them was when Boeing invested and demand that spacecraft be built their way. We were going to build the first two Teledesic spacecraft for a test in the 1990's. When Boeing invested $100m dollars Jim Stewart who was the CEO of the company was told not to use a University to do this as it was too important. Let's give it to a demonstrated small sat builder (Orbital Sciences). Well, they did that, and both satellites failed immediately on orbit. That did the company in, along with some other factors. I applaud Elon for what he has done, but the truth of this story is far more complex.

@wingod @trengriffin You mean Jim Stuart, and no he never claimed to be CEO of Teledesic

That's funny, everyone I was around with Jim at small Sat knew he was the guy with the check book. I find it interesting that Jim's name is not even mentioned. I remember it as two satellites, not one. The problem was that there was an unwillingness go to outside of the status quo satellite industry by many even in the company. Jim, who had been a senior technologist at JPL knew that using the computer industry supply chain and manufacturing know how was the way to go. I was friends with Jim when Boeing came in and put the $100m down and demanded it be done their way. The decision to go with Orbital was stupid. wired.com/1997/04/boeing…

I'm excited to announce we have achieved our Tier 1 mission success criteria and have begun gathering a tremendous amount of data on how this brand new spacecraft performs. On March 30th, 13:17:08Z, the Gravitas spacecraft separated from the SpaceX Transporter-16 stack to begin its mission as one of the highest power free-flying satellites ever launched. Immediately after separation, the spacecraft autonomously: - Executed detumbling maneuvers - Established two-way communications with the ground (on our very first ground station pass) - Deployed its 20kW solar arrays - Slewed to a safe and stable attitude to await further ground commands These actions alone are a testament to the incredible work of our in-house engineering, software, and GNC teams to build a robust spacecraft. Since then, our operations team completed all initial system activations and checkouts, confirming the vehicle is in a power positive and thermally stable state with no major anomalies observed at this time. We completed this phase of the mission ahead of schedule. Next up we will be powering up and downlinking data for all payloads aboard the Gravitas spacecraft in support of our customers and partners while continuing to put the spacecraft through its paces. As we noted ahead of launch: The goal of this mission is to experiment and push our systems to the limit to inform future missions. I look forward to sharing more on our successes and challenges as the mission proceeds. Video of our satellite below; link to full T-16 webcast: x.com/SpaceX/status/…

There have been very few failures in the OneWeb constellation; on Mar 16 OneWeb SL0179, launched in 2021, began rapid orbit lowering, presumably being retired as a result of some malfunction.

@engine_rich @FREESPEECH1017 I'm glad that you were able to figure out how to stack the data on top of one another within the narrow confines of Excel without using an external supporting structure

@FREESPEECH1017 This one took an especially large effort, but I'm proud of the work of me and my team. x.com/i/status/20390…

Here's the updated graph! February is in the books, and for $ASTS it was another incredibly consistent month. $ASTS 's launch rate was perfectly consistent all month, and all year-to-date. This is a testament to the company's hard work and dedication to connecting the unconnected! Tune in to tonight's earnings call to hear the company officials maintain their insane guidance of having 45-60 satellites by end of this year! Also, since $ASTS has been off to such a smashing year so far, I created a 2nd bonus graph this month. Posted in the comments.

BREAKING: @Amazonleo is bringing more high-speed Wi-Fi to @Delta customers. ✈️ Starting in 2028, Delta will introduce Amazon Leo with an initial installation on 500 aircraft, delivering fast speeds and low latency at 35,000 feet in the air. Amazon Leo's constellation sits at just 370 miles up in low Earth orbit, cutting signal travel time and enabling consistent connectivity everywhere — from takeoff to landing.

@darkstarsats @Megaconstellati There are two unpaired licenses (out of the 200 on offer) that Starlink needs. I'd estimate they'll spend ~$20M

@Megaconstellati @TMFAssociates generating hype around entering the MNO market before the IPO

What's @Starlink's interest in the AWS-3 auction? Most likely securing the DL part (2155-2180MHz, blue block below) and combine it with their AWS-4 (ex Echostar) to roughly double DL to 45MHz (minus guard band). AWS-3 UL won't be too useful for D2D due to AWS-1 below and federal users above limiting PFD. Unless they manage to get PCS blocks and reverse UL&DL to partially unlock n256 (purple), they'd need the 3GPP to standardise yet another frequency band and chipmakers to implement it before they could put AWS-3 to use for D2D. Neither option appears straightforward.